Set Rspec default GET request format to JSON

Question

I am doing functional tests for my controllers with Rspec. I have set my default response format in my router to JSON, so every request without a suffix will return JSON.

Answer 1

Running Rails 5 and Rspec 3.5 I had to set the headers to accomplish this.

post '/users', {'body' => 'params'}, {'ACCEPT' => 'application/json'}

Thi matches what the example in the docs looks like:

require "rails_helper"

RSpec.describe "Widget management", :type => :request do
  it "creates a Widget" do
    headers = {
      "ACCEPT" => "application/json",     # This is what Rails 4 accepts
      "HTTP_ACCEPT" => "application/json" # This is what Rails 3 accepts
    }
    post "/widgets", { :widget => {:name => "My Widget"} }, headers

    expect(response.content_type).to eq("application/json")
    expect(response).to have_http_status(:created)
  end
end

Answer 2

before :each do
  request.env["HTTP_ACCEPT"] = 'application/json'
end

Answer 3

Per the Rspec docs, the supported method is through the headers:

require "rails_helper"

RSpec.describe "Widget management", :type => :request do

  it "creates a Widget" do
    headers = {
      "ACCEPT" => "application/json",      # This is what Rails 4 and 5 accepts
      "HTTP_ACCEPT" => "application/json", # This is what Rails 3 accepts
    }
    post "/widgets", :params => { :widget => {:name => "My Widget"} }, :headers => headers

    expect(response.content_type).to eq("application/json")
    expect(response).to have_http_status(:created)
  end

end

Answer 4

Perhaps you could add the first answer into spec/spec_helper or spec/rails_helper with this:

config.before(:each) do
  request.env["HTTP_ACCEPT"] = 'application/json' if defined? request
end

if in model test (or any not exist request methods context), this code just ignore. it worked with rspec 3.1.7 and rails 4.1.0 it should be worked with all rails 4 version generally speaking.

Answer 5

The following works for me with rspec 3:

before :each do
  request.headers["accept"] = 'application/json'
end

This sets HTTP_ACCEPT.

Answer 6

Why don't RSpec's methods, "get", "post", "put", "delete" work in a controller spec in a gem (or outside Rails)?

Based off this question, you could try redefining process() in ActionController::TestCase from https://github.com/rails/rails/blob/32395899d7c97f69b508b7d7f9b7711f28586679/actionpack/lib/action_controller/test_case.rb.

Here is my workaround though.

describe FooController do
    let(:defaults) { {format: :json} }

    context 'GET index' do
        let(:params) { defaults }
        before :each do
            get :index, params
        end

        # ...
    end

    context 'POST create' do
        let(:params) { defaults.merge({ name: 'bar' }) }
        before :each do
            post :create, params
        end

        # ...
    end
end